Table of Contents:
Introduction
Minimal Exposure
Time Consumption
The Competition
About Us
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Introduction
You’ve seen it and maybe even dealt with it first hand: the dreaded empty lobby season. The
frustration that ensues when room occupancy is painfully low but you don’t want to sacrifice profit
margins. You’ve also spent hour-upon-hour trying to gather enough information on competitive
rates that sometimes you forget you’re dealing with hotel rooms and not abstract numbers and
figures.
All of this is enough to make your head spin. Not to mention, you’re not even getting to the real
problem: how can you maintain higher occupancy rates without selling your rooms for next to
nothing?
With over 20 years of industry experience, LeisureLink has seen it all. We’ve seen the ups and downs
of the hotel and resort industry. We’ve seen boutique hotels and large resorts struggle with
competition, brand recognition, and basic managerial skills. We’ve seen some of the top hotels fail
and those we never thought possible, succeed. With over $500 million in bookings we’ve been able
to pioneer, develop, and deliver industry-leading distributions all to help you. For the past 14 years
we have worked to build the perfect all-in-one database, to help you do what you know is possible,
and to maybe even take some of that unwanted stress off of your plate.
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Minimal Exposure: The Leading Factor to the Empty Hotel Room
During the universally dreaded off seasons, minimal exposure is one of the attributes leading to the
empty lobby syndrome. The difficulty is that hotels have a hard time maintaining competitive rates
while driving occupancy during slow periods. As two attributing market penetration factors, the
Average Daily Rate (ADR) and Revenue per Available Room (RevPAR), contribute to building exposure
during these slow months. In order to better understand these two factors as associated pain points,
let’s define them:
ADR
As the key component in measuring a hotel’s room revenue/rooms sold, the Average Daily
Rate (ADR) is a bi-product of the hotels total daily room revenue divided by the total
number of rooms sold that day: room revenue/ rooms sold= ADR. However, room rates
need to be positioned competitively to attract customers from all identified market
segments—the right market mix will produce higher ADR.
RevPAR
The Revenue per Available Room or (RevPAR) is similar to ADR but it measures revenue
divided by the number of available rooms, rather than the number of occupied rooms.
RevPAR is key to measuring how well a hotel is able to fill rooms (regardless of price) both
during on and off seasons.
One of the greatest obstacles that hotel and resort managers are facing is the inability to manageADR and RevPar.
The Solution:
Avoid the financial headache of echoing hallways during the off seasons with a centralized
easy-to-use analytics dashboard. Imagine a dashboard where hotel and resort managers
can monitor ADR and RevPAR, gather OTA ranking, compile competitive rate analyses,
complete bookings, access real-time rates, and manage specials and promotions.
Although all of these features centralized under one main dashboard might seem unreal,
they're far from. With LeisureLink’s dashboard, vacation property managers are once again
able to drive occupancy and RevPar without increasing staff. Online distribution is driving
revenue and bookings for vacation rentals.When tracking this data over time, patterns that
weren’t initially identifiable start to coalesce and can then be accounted for.
Finally, hotels should actively work with online discount providers and maintain OTAor
GDS distribution agreements.
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Time Consumption
In the hotel industry, the saying “money never sleeps” is beyond pertinent. And for hotel and resort
managers the saying, "you never sleep" might be even more valid. As one of the most perishable
inventory items, hotel rooms, as every hotel manager knows, are irredeemable if unsold— leaving
managers with an endless amount of pressure and no time. Along with already long to-do lists, hotel
and resort managers are also required to account for the fluctuation of room sales, including:
• Monitoring Online Sales Platforms
Finding high-quality leads, automating processes, and growing your pipeline are just a
few of the components that lead to the headache that is monitoring sales platforms.
• Comparing the Rate at Which Rooms Are Selling (Are your rooms selling too
quickly or not fast enough?)Good property managers sell all their rooms. Great property
managers know that simply selling rooms isn’t enough, sell the rooms to the highest
bidder. Every customer that is turned away after all the rooms sell, is a painful reminder
that the room sold for too low.
• Adjusting Room Rates
Managing the constant ebb and flow of room sales—one minute rooms are selling at
exceptionally high rates while the next minute rates are stagnant.
These things alone are enough to make anyone's head spin but adding them to the already required
managerial tasks makes the pursuit of higher occupancy rates virtually non-existent.
The Solution:
The solution to this problem, aside from there being two or even three of you, is to have a
software that automatically compares and tracks your direct competitor’s pricing so that
you can adjust your inventory and pricing to reach your revenue goals. Save time and
maybe catch up on some sleep with LeisureLink’s Competitive Rate Shopping feature. This
technology provides hotel and resort managers with the ability to intelligently track and
analyze direct competitor pricing so that inventory and pricing can be adjusted to reach
revenue goals.
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The Competition
In this industry, understanding and dealing with your competition doesn’t require detective work. It’s
simple: the real problem is that competitors are marking their rooms at irrevocably low rates— prices
so low, there is no longer a profit margin. In return, leaving no room for competition.
As the most poignant and difficult problem in dealing with your competitors, pricing comes with a
long list of complexities.
Firstly, hotel and resort managers need to first decide how to deal with challenges in the pricing
market while acknowledging that extreme pricing cuts appear desperate. More and more hotels are
racing to the bottom of the pricing scale to gain more customers, resulting in a loss of revenues.
Additionally, if a customer compares your rates against your competitors, they are going to see the
reduced room rate as the actual value of the room. Resulting in your rooms staying at that low rate.
The Solution:
The solution to dealing with your competitors pricing techniques is two-fold. You must
first understand your competition and then find a platform that helps you leverage pricing
solutions.
1. Identifying Your Competition
Yes, we all like to flatter ourselves (somebody has to), but when it comes to
viewing your competition, don’t praise yourself— your small boutique hotel is
not competing with the large resort located on prime real-estate. Wake up: your
hotel is what it is. Embrace that.
The first step to solving the competitor problem is to identify your actual
competitors. There are two levels of competition in the industry. The first is that
travelers only have so much money and all businesses are competing for as much
of that money as possible. This isn’t something good property managers lose
sleep over. But good property managers do need to compete so that they win as
many of the decisions in their space of the consumer buying process. To win this
competition, you need to know who your real competition is.
2. Your Pricing Solution
Now that you understand how to identify your competition, how can you
adequately analyze your competitors and their pricing? With LeisureLink’s Yield
Management Software you can get all the “Rights” done: sell the rightunit, in the
right place, at the right time. In return, eliminating the headache associated with
incorrect pricing mechanisms.
Traditionally, hotel managers would have to analyze their competitors pricing with complicated
spreadsheets, whiteboards full of data, and clipboards with various sticky notes. With LeisureLink,
you can kiss all of those disheveled sticky-notes and spreadsheets goodbye. Leisure Link’s all-in-one
database allows you to track and analyze direct competitors pricing so that you can adjust yours
accordingly— leaving you with the ability to kick back and let the database do the work.
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About Us
LeisureLink is the integrated online distribution solution for vacation rental and resort property
managers. LeisureLink will help drive bookings and provide integrated, user friendly access to
leading distribution channels.
Insert the images and accompanied information from here starting with “Channel Management”
Channel Management
Choose when and where your property will be
shown across all distribution channels. Update
all of your inventory, rates and promotions
across all channels at one time.
Learn More
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